Remote Intestinal Injury Early After Experimental Polytrauma and Hemorrhagic Shock

Dysfunction of the gut-blood barrier plays an important role in many diseases, such as inflammatory bowel disease, hemorrhagic shock (HS), or burn injury. However, little is known about gut barrier dysfunction after hemodynamically instable polytrauma (PT). Therefore, we aimed to evaluate the effects of PT and HS on remote intestinal damage and barrier dysfunction, especially regarding the role of zonula occludens protein 1 (ZO-1) as an important tight junction protein.Male C57BL/6 mice were subjected to either PT (thorax trauma, closed head injury, soft tissue injury, and distal femoral fracture), 60 min of pressure-controlled HS (30 ± 5 mmHg), or PT+HS, or sham procedures.Animals of all trauma groups showed an increase in abdominal girth and dilation of the intestine during the experimental period, which was largest in the PT+HS group. Increased blood-tissue permeability to albumin (assessed by Evans blue dye) was found in the HS group. Experimental groups showed a slight increase in plasma concentration of intestinal fatty acid binding protein and some intestinal damage was histologically detectable. Of note, PT+HS animals revealed significantly reduced expression of ZO-1 in intestinal epithelial cells. In an in-vitro model, stimulation of human colon epithelial cells with peptidoglycan, but not with lipopolysaccharide, resulted in elevated secretion of pro-inflammatory cytokines, reflecting inflammatory activity of the intestinal epithelium.Taken together, PT and HS lead to increased permeability of the gut-blood barrier. Bacterial components may lead to production of inflammatory and chemotactic mediators by gut epithelial cells, underlining the role of the gut as an immunologically active organ.